Saw something I can never forget (988 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.62 on 16 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by crazyaardvark (View user info) at 2006-03-14 01:33:52 EST
Non-fiction, Ubers. Some things you will always remember.
Stay with it, it gets more interesting.
My brother's fiance had her 21st birthday in a private catered box at the horseraces last Saturday. I'm a horseracing virgin, my one memory of any type of animal racing being a visit to the greyhounds when I was eight. For my racing debut we bought my brother a trendy pink shirt (only real men can wear pink) and I dug out a dress, some feathers for my hair and a string of pearls. I felt glamourous but a little silly as my family traipsed past row upon row of pensioners in slippers and ugly hats in the lower levels of the club on our journey upwards to the privately booked 'Chairman's Box'. My brother's fiance's family is what you might call 'old money'. The view from the box was spectacular. We were situated almost directly across from the finish line and mounting yards and high above the regular stands. We could see across the track, past the river and beyond. Pelicans squabbled in the artifical lakes decorating the huge expanse in the centre of the vaguely circular course. Tiny cyclists glided along bike trails which curved around the river. And the champagne and food were free. Who could complain about that?
I let the first race go without any effort to understand the system of it all, enjoying the atmosphere and the sleek beauty of the horses. A horseriding friend once told me that race horses are completely insane. They have to be, to be ready to go in an instant, to want to win. I watched the placid, beautiful white control horses calm the frisky competitors i nthe mounting yards by walking next to them. Their riders wore sombre grey, a contrast to the shiny, bright jockeys in pink, yellow, blue and white. Having never bet before, my brother and his fiance gave me a quick lesson on the intricacies of novice 'Win and Place' betting. In commemoration of the talkative and quite odd Indian taxi driver we had on the way to the course, I carefully placed my two-dollar bet on a horse called Lee's Taxi.
The next race was to be a fairly long one, 1800 metres, and the starting gates were set up across to the side of the course. The jockeys mounted the horses in the yards and one by one slipped out onto the track to head towards the starting gates. The first few always shoot out of the mounting yards as though they are already racing, the others following at more sedate paces. It's always the most jumpy ones that leave the yards first. I guess the jockeys firgure it's better to let them have their head if they are fired up already.
With a crash of gates the race started. On the pixellated orange viewing screen near the finish line I could see the horses close up, but chose instead to strain to see them on the far side of the track. I figured the other way was kind of cheating myself, like staying glued to the big screens as a live concert. As they rounded the final corner my horse was languishing in the back of the field and I was giggling into my champagne glass. A glance at the big screen and I missed the fall, but I heard it in the others pressed against the windows of the box. A collective gasp of horror turned my head and I saw a horse and rider tumble, terribly, across the grass. The cries went up. Oh no, oh my god, oh shit. Oh, oh, oh. The horse stumbled up to it's knees and then fell again. It skewed upwards, off balance and gained it's feet. Immediately obvious was that something was seriously wrong with one of its hind legs. Bizarrely, as the horse struggled and cried out (I couldn't hear it, way up in the box, but I could feel it screaming) the race continued and the commentator calmly called the winner. The horse, driven by panic, now set off in a stumbling, three-legged run along the fence and towards the finish line. Everyone was on their feet. My hand was over my mouth. I will never forget the icy feeling that came over me when I realised what I had thought briefly was some sort of loosened saddle strap flapping was actually it's leg. The limb was broken so badly that the whole leg from the upper thigh down swung freely from side to side as the terrified animal sprinted along the fence, towards the stretch of track in front of the stands.
At this point I glanced back up the track to see, running full-pelt towards the horse, which was still more than a hundred metres away and gaining speed, several handlers and a man in a white hat with a black bag, the vet. An entire entourage had appeared so suddenly they could have sprung up from the grass. Ahead of them and going flat out, though, was a white control horse and it's grey rider. It's white mane streamed in the wind and I wondered if that beautiful, calm animal and its calm rider had ever gone so fast before. Behind, further up the track, the jockey was walking gingerly towards the stands. He was completely ignored by the bunch racing to attend the horse. I hate myself for it thinking it, but maybe they headed for the horse first not because it was obviously badly injured, but because a horse is worth more money than a jockey. The control horse and rider reached the injured animal first and brought it to a halt, somehow. Onto the track appeared a four-wheel drive towing a horse float with green lettering on the side, 'Horse Ambulance'. The human being ambulance was further behind and was being driven almost sedately towards the unsteady jockey. I was amazed at how quickly the horse was calmed and standing relatively still. It was still tossing it's head a little and shifting it's weight, but the control horse's presence calmed it almost immediately. The animal must have been in shock, to be standing so still when it's leg was dangling like that. It looked like the thighbone had been completely shattered. From what I could see, no bone protuded the skin, but it seemed that there was no solid bone left between the hip and first joint of its leg.
The entourage and horse ambulance had now reached the animal. A handler had the horse's reins and was rubbing its nose briskly as it tossed its head. From the back of the ambulance came a jointed screen made of what looked like tarpaulin on long poles. Some handlers raised the poles up and the mangled back half of the horse was mercifully hidden from view. Someone was still rubbing it's nose, and even as more sections of screen went up and I could see less and less, it seemed there was always someone there briskly stroking its nose. Whether this was more comfort to the horse or the people doing it, I don't really know. Further down the track, I saw a well-dressed man comforting a sobbing woman, her face in her hands, turned away from the scene.
"Oh look," I said to no one in particular, "there's the owners." I had known as soon as the horse had started running that it was not going to be alright, it was not going to be able to be fixed. Around me people were speculating if the horse was going to be put down. Maybe it will still be good for breeding, I suggested. Someone corrected me, saying that horses can't stand still long enough for a broken leg to heal. The bone never knits and they suffer. A break like that is not fixable. The specualtion turned to whether they would ethanase the horse on field or off. The cheerful mood of the day was shattered. I had tears in my eyes. My father, a tough farm boy from way back, said "I can't watch this anymore," and turned away to sit where he couldn't see out the windows. I could still see the tip of the horse's ears over the screen when it tossed its head. Then, I couldn't. The screen was extended past the ramp to the ambulance and we never saw them take the horse away, unconscious, maybe already euthanased, but they did. The only mention the commentator had made through out the awful episode was something like "And there's been a nasty fall". I guess to mention it is to draw attention to it, but it was like not mentioning a white elephant in the corner of a room.
By the end of the day the feathers on a discarded green fascinator whispered in the breeze of an airconditioner and we'd all recovered from the little episode, but it's been imprinted on my mind. Now, as part of the 'Y' or 'Z' or whatever ridiculous letter is given generically to the generation after 'X', it should be pretty hard to shock me. I've seen it all on the internet (and a lot of it on Ubersite) or reality TV, things I had not thought possible, things I had not thought human being were capable of doing to themselves and each other. But I'll never forget the image of that horse, terrified, just running and running as though to run away from itself, from the pain, as it's leg swung so unnaturally. And the idea that a fall like that was death so certain for that horse that it may have been better if it had died instantly. At least then it wouldn't have had to suffer like that.
User Reviews
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2006-03-14 19:14:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by modernpost (user info) at 2006-03-14 08:22:50 (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck it while it's warm
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hahahaha
Personally, seeing animal sufferings never bothered me. Probably because of where I come from.
Good post nonetheless.
Submitted by digdug (user info) at 2006-03-14 19:10:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Try slitting a deer's neck to put it out of its misery because your shot was off. Trust me, you'll remember that in your nightmares.
Submitted by pragmatic (user info) at 2006-03-14 19:03:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I have a friend who refuses to go to the races because she has a fear of seeing a horse have an accident.
This story convinced me I'm never going to go to the races again either.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-03-14 18:43:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
good story
Submitted by BranDo (user info) at 2006-03-14 14:04:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I used to own horses in a former life and my stomach turned around reading this.
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2006-03-14 13:22:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-03-14 12:48:15 (#)
Ranking: 2
I saw something I can't forget as well: http://www.fuck.org
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BigBuckButtFuckDuck.com ?????
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-03-14 12:48:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I saw something I can't forget as well: http://www.fuck.org
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-03-14 08:43:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Using animals for sport/betting really pisses me off. But it's even sadder to hear about an injury like this. How the fuck did it break its leg from a simple fall?
Submitted by modernpost (user info) at 2006-03-14 08:22:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck it while it's warm
Submitted by DizzyMissus (user info) at 2006-03-14 07:09:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent!
Submitted by earth_collapse (user info) at 2006-03-14 05:31:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Beautiful.
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2006-03-14 03:59:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2006-03-14 03:46:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
when that tarp goes up...the horse is toast
you don't want to know how it was done in the "old days"
because sometimes, unbelievably, they missed!
Submitted by Blinkish (user info) at 2006-03-14 02:02:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Horses (or any animal for that matter) always make me sad. I can watch people get hurt unfazed, but animals in pain really tug at my heart. I'm sorry you had to see that, it would haunt me too.
Submitted by wardy (user info) at 2006-03-14 02:00:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
it's sacrifices like this that made it possible for my mom to put macaroni art up on her fridge for about ten straight years.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2006-03-14 01:44:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I saw a similar event. It sticks with you.